


The Ballad of Blind Love

by vogue91



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Character Death, Cheating, M/M, Suicide, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 07:23:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13806297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vogue91/pseuds/vogue91
Summary: He couldn’t explain the source nor the reason behind it, but Ludwig was perfectly aware that he was attracted by England, in an almost brutal way.





	The Ballad of Blind Love

At times, he would’ve liked to be a little more similar to his allies.

Being carefree like Feliciano, or cold like Kiku.

Instead, he wasn’t capable of being neither. He could just keep tormenting himself, holed up in his room, in the darkness, with two key turns. He didn’t want to see anybody, and the last thing he needed was for Italy to come looking for him, because he needed something or just because he felt like spending time with him.

It wasn’t Feliciano he needed, that night. He knew that the only person who could’ve soothed his torments that night, was _him._

It had all happened almost by mistake, a day like the others, yet another time when his silly ally had let himself being grasped by France. And when he had gone to take him back, Ludwig had been almost stroke down.

In Bonnefoy’s living room, elegant as usual, was sitting Arthur. He tried to look important, to look threatening just like his ally, but Ludwig read something more on his face. He read an infinite tiredness, and a sadness like no others.

It was in that moment that he wondered how he could’ve always missed that Kirkland was... _beautiful._ And not beautiful with the trivial charm that was typical of Francis, yet beautiful like something pure, simple, like a flower about to blossom, that instead wasn’t new to spring.

He shook his head. It wasn’t like him to fall prey to this kind of thoughts, prey to cheesy metaphors. But he couldn’t help it, his mind flew to those moments, where his personal obsession had begun.

It had started like something dormant, images that from time to time visited his mind, but he hadn’t considered them much. When he had started waiting with trepidation the times he would’ve been able to see him again, when he had realized he knew the features of his face by heart... there he had understood that his surprise at France’s home hadn’t been about seeing those slight wrinkles staining indelibly his face.

No. It was _attraction._

He couldn’t explain the source nor the reason behind it, but Ludwig was perfectly aware that he was attracted by England, in an almost brutal way.

And when he noticed that spark of interest in the hazel eyes of the other nation, it was his undoing.

They were adversaries, destined to go to battle for two different factions, and they were both aware of it.

They were aware of it even on that day, in the English countryside, when Arthur had found Ludwig crouched down in the long grass. When the excuse of a reconnaissance mission on enemy’s land hadn’t been enough for England.

When Arthur had smiled, serenely, and had kissed him. Without an explanation, without a word. And Ludwig could do nothing but freeze, clenching his fists trying to stop hands that, he knew that, he wouldn’t have controlled anymore once free from inhibition.

He had felt his smell invading his nose, then his senses, still unaware that the very same scent would’ve soon started persecuting him. Like those hands. Like those lips, incredibly sweet, incredibly soft.

Ludwig’s mistake had been not understanding that it wasn’t the beginning at all. That was his ending.

 

~

 

As far as Arthur tried, he couldn’t remember the first time he had kissed Ludwig. He remembered perfectly the landscape around him, he remembered the sensation of the delicate spring wind on his skin.

But he couldn’t remember what it had felt lie resting his lips on the German’s. Just that he had felt happy, even though of a feeble and illusory happiness. Then... just darkness around his shape.

He didn’t know whether his mind refused to remember those moments or if he had imposed to himself to blur them. The only thing he was aware of in that moment, was the taste of sin that had that first encounter of them, and that it had been the beginning of a life under the banner of betrayal.

He had betrayed the Entente first. Then Ludwig. Then he had betrayed himself, allowing himself to cause all that useless pain.

Abandonment syndrome, that’s what it was.

 _You’re an idiot, Arthur_ he talked to himself, as it often happened as of late. The truth was that he was still desperately looking for someone to fill the abyssal emptiness created by America. And when he realized he was deluding himself, that he lied to himself, he let go in a free fall toward a chasm where he dragger all those around him.

It had been like that for years, and he knew that. Everytime he knew someone, thinking back about him he overlapped Alfred’s face on his, to the point of changing his own memories to give himself a minimal sign of hope, something telling him that Alfred was still with him, that they still were true brothers, not that couple of stupid rival nations, that can’t do nothing but fight, fight, fight.

He was never going to admit it, but he knew that he actually envied America.

When he realized his brother was happy, that he had managed to get rid of the burden of his past... he would’ve wanted to be like him, more outgoing, and more free to make his own choices without having constantly to listen to his conscience’s remorse.

Instead he was forced to keep living that half existence, spent between domination and submission, between love and hate. A life whose utility Arthur really couldn’t see.

He had liked being with Germany. He was strong, oriented, and also sweet, even though owning this particular quality was the last thing the Teutonic desired. But he couldn’t think about him without Alfred’s face to come out of nowhere, without realizing that all he wanted was to have his brother back.

He sighed. He didn’t know how much longer he would’ve stood that situation.

But he knew that that destructive process had to stop. And soon.

 

~

 

It had happened almost by chance.

It was yet another thought coming to torment him in the darkest moments, another memory that invaded arrogantly his mind.

When England had told him that it couldn’t work between them, that nothing that they have said to each other during that time had sense anymore, Ludwig didn’t want to believe him. He thought he merely felt guilty about his allies, just like him, for that sort of betrayal that they both were perpetrating.

Then one day, during a reconnaissance in French territory, he had seen him with Bonnefoy. And he had seen in the intimacy of their gestures that Arthur’s betrayal went far beyond the one caused to the Entente.

He had betrayed Ludwig. And he had betrayed all those promises, thrown to the wind with the first kiss given to the French.

He remembered that when he had seen them it had felt like he had been shot. Instinctively he brought a hand to his heart, looking for an inexistent bullet. It wasn’t touchable, that pain, but it was more than ever real.

He had wanted to go back home, but he hadn’t felt capable to face no one.

So he had just walked, long, restless, as if he had wanted to be so tired as to suffocate those thoughts gripping on him, atrocious like an omen of death.

When he had risen his eyes, after he didn’t know how long, he realized he had reached Paris’ suburbs. What he saw made him feel helpless.

Disrepair, ruin, filth, neglect. Hunger, poverty, fear.

_This place must look a lot like me right now._

This thought spawned the anger that up to that moment had been dormant.

He remembered he had punched a hard wall of concrete, and he had looked at his hand to check on the wound.

It was never going to heal. That cut was the emblem of what England had done to him, that cut told all the pain Ludwig had always run from like the worst of evils, but that now came hitting him with his lethal strength.

He took his head in his hands, holding it tight, trying to get out of it any memory there stored. Trying to forget those lips, those hands, that smile, that now had the mere taste of broken promises.

 

~

 

Arthur was in his room, lazily collapsed on a couch, doing nothing but staring at the ceiling.

He was tired. Tired of living, tired of pretending. He had been still in that position for hours now, but he felt he didn’t even have the strength necessary to move, nor he felt like it.

Why couldn’t he stay there forever? Alone, or perhaps just with his imagination as company. Leaving outside the door any memory and all the regrets weighing on him, as an ancestral sin.

For he couldn’t deny he had his faults. He refused to remember the moment, to erase his sin. Or perhaps he couldn’t concentrate hard enough to remember. But it was undeniable that he had been wrong, that his entire existence was becoming a huge mistake.

He couldn’t remember, he didn’t want to, the moment when he had given in to France, declaring his defeat, the defeat of a better future, where he wouldn’t have needed to twist reality and his own memories, trying to wedge Alfred in them.

He had humiliated himself, for a game called sin, called lust, called flesh and sweat. Because for this wretchedness he had chosen to sell his pride, for proposals made at the wrong moment, when he felt like he was reaching his lowest point.

That he regretted it, didn’t matter. One can forget his past, but never erase it. Years, and the thin wrinkles on his forehead had taught him that.

He leant his head on the pillow, wishing he could at least see it become wet of bitter tears. But crying wasn’t allowed either in that personal and cursed Hell of bricks.

He was still thinking, or trying not to, when the door suddenly opened.

In that moment he wasn’t sure of what was going on, and he started to convince himself to have fallen asleep without noticing, and that it was just a dream.

Or, he had to realize all too son, a nightmare.

Ludwig stood on the doorstep, motionless, like a statue made of the purest marble. He stared at Arthur without saying a word, yet loquacious in his thoughts, which would’ve made the English one shiver had he expressed them.

England noticed with horror that in his right hand, with naturalness, the German had a gun. Even in the moment of panic, he saw it was small and much old, and he classified it as an ancient Colt.

 _An ancient gun for an ancient sin_ he found himself thinking, grasping the feeble hope that it was a dream.

He had to change his mind when he heard a deafening sound, and he realized that his desire had been fulfilled. Now the pillow, abandoned next to him, was wet enough. Just not with tears.

Before closing his eyes, Arthur bid a silent farewell to his blood, spilled to pay for his sins.

Then he looked at Ludwig in the eyes, just for a moment.

He forgave him.

 _Goodbye, Alfred_ he allowed himself to think. As in life, so in death. Always, for his lost brother.

 

~

 

His hand shivered when his finger brushed the cold metal of the trigger, but for no reason in the world he would’ve showed that to Arthur.

In his mind ran pictures of tortures, he saw all the most brutal ways to kill a human being, from the guillotine to the electric chair.

But nothing in the world could’ve given him that same flash of hope, soon turned into disappointment, that an execution in cold blood was giving him.

He wasn’t himself, but he was oddly conscious of that madness.

A sly madness, penetrating, which had wrapped him in its coils and was now driving him. But it didn’t matter: he didn’t mean to struggle.

Seeing Arthur’s blood, that blood that a few weeks before he had felt boiling under the Englishman’s skin, made him remember who he truly was.

He was a nation, far too important to give in to those trivialities, to that game that some would’ve called ‘love’, but that he now saw just as a pretence.

He got mad at himself for not being able to keep control, for having allowed anger to win him over, to reign over his thoughts, over his actions.

A thin veil of pity laid on his eyes when England gave him his last gaze. But a pity that he knew wasn’t going to change what had happened, nor that senseless mix of feelings wandering inside him.

He sat next to the lifeless body of whom had been his lover, as if he was sitting on a throne, a throne for a king that couldn’t rule than day, but was instead ruled.

He looked Arthur’s skin staining of a shining red, he saw it ruining, he imagined it perishing under the weight of death, and then he thought about the days when he was allowed to run his hands over that skin, caressing it, thinking that it was his, and how much he liked that it was.

He leant his head on the backrest, and passed the barrel of the gun over his temple.

One more time, the cold of metal made him shiver.

He didn’t know whether his body would’ve stood another bullet, this time far too real for the wound to actually heal. His finger slipped once more on the trigger, almost sensually.

 _Auf wiedersehen, England_ he thought.

Then, nothing else.


End file.
